Uncertainty nips at his heels as Jung awakens. When the moment of truth comes, he learns most bitterly, that he is no hero. He does the best thing he could for the woman he had grown to care for over the years by swallowing up his pride and making that phone call to the same brother he had been avoiding over the past weeks. It is no truce - but he knows, he feels it somewhere in the most foolishly juvenile corners of his heart, that So is hardly the enemy. And Jung is not the man Ha Jin wants, it had always been So. Wook has been a fool to think he could change it.

But he cannot help but fall - especially when it is her that reaches to his pit of hell to pull him out. He is not even aware of the shadows consuming him - the pent up energy giving way to boiling frustration and processing itself into something twisted and vile. In the lucid intervals between his episodes of rage, guilt consumes him and in turn he seeks the shelter of fury once more. Anger takes away the space other emotions can occupy, but also takes from him the man that he had been. He realizes only when her soft hands on his cheeks anchor him to the reality.

“This is not you Jung -” her words are soft, meant only for his ears with accompanying look of plea in her eyes. She had chased the servant girl away, and pours over him tending to his new self caused bruises. “You were always a soft hearted boy.”

“You know nothing Noona -” he tells her, with a shake of his head. “You are too easily trusting.”

She had been his tutor for a year when Myung Hee ( the original arrangement) had gone abroad to pursue her high studies. Jung had never cared more about his marks. Someone - now that he thinks of it, it must have been So - had told him that if he does not improve Ha Jin would come no more and he had even managed to stay awake during history for one entire term. He had a crush on her - she was so beautiful and cute - Yo had rolled on the floor when he mentioned it rolling his eyes at So who had hit him with the dictation book he was checking on. It hurts, but he does not understand what he had done to earn the beating. It is only afterwords that it occurred to him that perhaps his brother felt the same. And it takes even more time for him to work out his crush has a crush on his brother. Jealousy claws at him and he glowers when they would bury him under sums and exchange glances over rustling pages. She gives So a plush wolf when he goes on a tour, and blushes prettily over something that he whispers in her ear.

“Why does he get toys?” Jung asks, the little green monster that he is peeking from the half closed door.

The pair exchanges a glance, just as So stuffs the animal in his bag and away from anyone’s sight.

“So that he sleeps well at night,” Ha Jin tells him, as she steers Jung towards the study area. “Your brother can’t sleep if he doesn’t have a plush toy.”

“Why didn’t I know that before?” He wonders aloud and Ha Jin doesn’t enlighten him, her cheeks stained pink for the entire evening that follows.

He finds the wolf by her bedside when Jung goes to visit a comatose Ha Jin and So packs in silence back at home, pausing to look at him thoughtfully when he offers his own alligator as a replacement for Ha Jin’s wolf. He grows up to detest So for how easily he turns his back on the girl who had adored him, how easily he flies away in pursue of better career opportunity when she lies unconscious and broken, oblivious to his obvious infidelity. In the years that come he learns the dark side of the story, from his mother, from his brother, he learns the untold story of Tae’s death. He finds it believable, the more detached So becomes from Ha Jin. He had been playing around with her - he thinks as fury boils inside him. In the light of So’s reality, Wook seems much, much better man for her and he agrees when his older brother who had been by her side for no gain of his own asks him to keep Ha Jin’s past a secret. Jung tells Hae Soo nothing about So and wishes, in silence that she never learns of his betrayal either.

God hardly hears his prayers, So returns when it is convenient to him and sweeps her away into a storm of scandals. Even Wook, he admits gradually could be driven to the breaking point if he had been kept waiting for half a dozen years to be finally thrown away at the blink of an eye. He gives Wook that once leave to hold it against Ha Jin, though he thinks - inwardly - it is not her fault but So’s that she is reminded of their previous affair.

He holds on to that belief, to his mother’s words as she implores him to hide away until the scandal of the accident he had caused is blown away. Train in the secluded facilities that Haes provide, while his mother handles the scandal. However he feels burdened with guilt that Ha Jin is used as a escape goat to shift the public eye from his own mistake. He doesn’t see her, until so long after, when she returns back to Myung Hee’s old house with Wook at tow.

But then his belief on his mother’s words begins to tumble. They keep her a prisoner, he realizes as he watches the way the servant girl - Chae Ryung - watches her like a hawk. And Ha Jin is not happy, Ha Jin is not safe. He begins to wonder the purpose of it all, when he overhears the argument (one of the many) between Wook and Ha Jin. What was the purpose of compelling a woman to marry someone they don’t love? What was the purpose of keeping him here when it was apparent that the prosecution had no case against him and So did not intend to press charges. He had not known that until Ha Jin tells him - her tone sour with disappointment. Without him mentioning anything she knows of what trust he is talking about and her words are well chosen.

“Your brothers aren’t looking for you to punish Jung - ah,” she says wistfully. “They are worried you are destroying yourself. You need help and they are willing to help.”

“Your family is helping me Noona -”

“Are they?” She presses on. “Are you sure this is what you want? Or are you letting them make a weapon out of you just because you feel that is your duty to become what your mother has lost?”

“Noona - I want this!” He says determined, hanging to that last threads of a quickly dissolving rage. “You talk about me - but you don’t talk about what So hyung has apparently done to make sure I won’t beat him!”

“You have no idea how much your brother loves you,” she sits on the floor, leaning against the window, arms wrapped around her knees. It is well past dinner that she had refused, the cold meal lying abandoned by her side. His comment on the doping scandal has her gritting her teeth. “You have no right to pass judgments on what kind of a man he is.”

“I know what kind of a man he is Noona, he killed Tae hyung.”

And you almost killed him,” she counters softly. “How would you feel if I hold it against you now?”

“Noona -” he protests. “You don’t know him.”

“I know So since I was fifteen - Jung - ah,” her voice is full of untold stories. “I know him better than you do.”

“He abandoned you!” He says desperately. “When it was he who caused the accident in the first place -”

“He jumped in to save me - when he was injured himself.” She turns away, eyes closed, a sigh escaping her lips. It is then that he notices she has that old plush wolf in her lap, fingers threaded through its thick fur.

“Noona -”

“I can still see his blood in my hands - on the road, everywhere.” She speaks abruptly. “I would have never forgiven you. But - So sees you as his brother, I’d like to think he is right.” When she looks at him, her eyes glitter with restrained tears. “And he would not forgive me if I watched you destroying yourself in silence - please stay for a while and try to avoid whatever they are giving you for a while. It might be hard, but it will help in the long run.”

“I’m not being doped Noona.”

He goes to sit by her side, as she leans her head against the window and closes her eyes.

“Oh then you are not even aware what you’ve been consuming.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s someone watching me - I don’t feel safe enough to sleep - it’s in the water - it’s always in the water...” Her words trail off as sleep takes her over, sudden and unexpected. Chill takes over his bones as he realizes she was right in not trusting her surroundings. He carries her to his own room and locks the door after depositing her in his bed. It is then that he sees the shadow lurking in the darkness. Taking cove in the perpetual darkness that seems to be the norm of this safe house, he watches the door of Ha Jin’s room unbolts with a click. He stays in the shadows watching with his brows frowned when things start to break - crashes that echos in the night. It is the sound that brings the servant girl running, it is when she too vanishes into the room that he finally moves.

The sound from behind the door is that of a heaving animal - conversation is muffled that he could not be certain of the words he had stringed together.

“Gone! Gone! She is gone!” Stutters and pants the voice of a stranger. It has no constant tenor to it, as if several people take turns to speak, the voice fluxes changing its texture and pitch in a terrifying speed.

“She is here - little master,” pleads Chae Ryung, “she is with your brother!”

“Wook? Did Wook take her away? How could he! How could he! He promised! He promised! Traitor - I should have his head - I should - bring her now! Bring her!”

Terrified, and something that is half recognition curling around his numb mind Jung moves away from the door he had been listening against and instead, goes back to his own room, bolting it shut slides down to the floor against the door. Heart somewhere at his throat throbbing with emotions he does not pause to classify he watches Ha Jin sleeping. Neither of them was supposed to know of that shadowy man - he realizes as he tries to keep his breath even. Ha Jin is drugged, if she had been speaking the truth, Jung himself wasn’t supposed to be sane at this hour and there was some more terrifying creature roaming the halls.

Clutching a hand against his heart, he makes a decision on whim and picks up his phone.

**

Jung had never forgotten his existence was somehow always tied up with Yo’s. He was the unwanted child, brought to this world by two people who did not see eye to eye only because he was needed to save the life of their other child, in circumstances where his twin (most astonishingly) could not. He was born through surrogacy, after the twins his mother could not go through another pregnancy. However his mother loved him in spite of all the odds, when his father obviously didn’t care enough. It was one of the reasons why he favored his mother’s version of any event.

Doubt festers, faster than a wildfire when it takes hold on one. Jung spends a sleepless night guarding Ha Jin and replaying everything everyone had ever told him. So had called him his mother’s weapon, promised not to let him win but didn’t grab the golden opportunity to press charges for the accident and Ha Jin obviously loved So, he must have been blind as a kid not to realize that.

The Haes and Wook were up to something. He had no love left for the brother who kept hurting Ha Jin, contrary to what his mother believed Wook seemed to have ulterior motives. He would not be surprised if he and Haes turns out to be in cahoots. Then there was the anonymous man who sounded derailed and dangerous. It is that seed of doubt which Ha Jin had successfully planted on his subconscious that makes him call So in a situation where he is afraid for both their lives, but as since the modus operendum is branded on him he goes to his mother instead of So, secure in his faith that So would come for Ha Jin the following morning.He makes the call sound as authentic as possible, giving away no trace of his own panic - in case the spy in the skin of servant is listening to his call. He doesn’t apologize, or tell So what he had really witnessed instead makes a short, indifferent conversation that drives home the fact that he must - under any circumstance take Ha Jin out of this place and must do so immediately.

The fact that his brother had listened, had tried to offer him an olive branch does not help him rest easy. Instead he slips away after Ha Jin when she and Yeon Hwa goes for fittings the next morning just like he had informed So. He watches them leave together - So and Ha Jin and pauses when he catches the man who trails behind - Wook. He is not alone however and it makes him worried.

Trailing after Wook brings him here - a full circle back to the man whose survival had been the very reason of his creation - Yo.