6 years ago…

The beeping of machines dominates the air pungent with the smell of disinfectant. Monitors that indicate various data that escapes him, tiny lights flickering, levels rising and failing sum up into the sole reason he carry on.

Life.

She is still alive. So far from him, yet so close. So dear to him, yet so distant. After this moment they shall never meet again. Still she will live and live well; the knowledge makes him take a shaky breath in. That should be enough for a man who had lived decades with ashes of the woman he loved. It should be enough.

He is greedy for more - just a brush of fingertips through her hair, he assuages himself. In her deadly slumber Ha Jin does not stir and Hwang So, still scarred, still in the mourning clothes from his brother’s funeral, lets his fingers wander - over her closed eyes, the bridge of her nose, ghosting over the outline of her cracked lips.

Greed, burns in him, fueled by love and longing.

He has exactly five minutes before riding to the airport and thousands of miles away from her. He muses if she knows, if in her sleep she would dream about him.

“Ha Jin - ah,” the back of his knuckles stroke her cheek. “Thank you - though I’ve never admitted, it felt good to have you pestering after me. To know that someone cared. Thank you for everything.” His voice fails him and his throat tightens uncomfortably that he has to stop and swallow. “And I’m sorry - so sorry that I can’t be the one for you.”

“It has to end. It had to end, somehow. You are too good for me.”

Sandwiched between his hands her hand is small and white, too soft that it scares him to squeeze it tight.

“Live well. Don’t get into trouble. Eat well. Sleep well and try not to miss me much.” He shrugs despite of himself. “And if we ever meet again, don’t follow me, don’t hold my hand, don’t cry for me. Don’t love me ever again.”

In spite his own reservations, he touches his lips to her forehead with a sigh. His eyes burn and so did he. Steeling himself Hwang So turns to leave.

**
“So!” She wakes up with his name on her lips, in the semi darkness rippling with straps of soft silvery light. Her throat is parched and her eyes pool with years of un - shed tears. Tears she had no idea was buried under the cuts of her soul - never letting them heal properly. That fool - oh that sweet fool! “So!”

It makes sense all too late, the strange pull between them. Perhaps she had always loved him, or perhaps it was her fate to fell over and over again. For the life of her, Ha Jin does not care. For she has lived the life of reservations, protocols and directions for too long. Now that she has finally remembered, if not all, what it meant to be Ha Jin before the storm came and wracked her life, what he meant to her, she was not planning on letting him go.

The soft silvery light fills everywhere. Not enough to chase away the shadows, only adequate to keep them at bay. In darkness she stumbles around, the unknown landscape of the room she woke up in, hindering her progress.

She finds her phone charging on the nightstand, a glass of water that she gulps in one go, massaging her throat Ha Jin looks around, finally settled enough to take notice of her surroundings. Chrome gray and white walls are strapped with that silver light, the decor is black, hinted with hues of the deepest blue and sliver. There is a sharp precision in everything from the gray pillows on the sofa to the crease - less bedspread. A detached cleanliness, a lonely perfection of an empty house not a home lived in.

She merely glances at her phone, does not even touch it as she wanders out of the room. The silver light dances in the passage outside, more pronounced and rippling. It comes from the open space into which a polished spiral staircase descends, abstract paintings on the walls splash sudden bursts of color into the otherwise muted black and white.

Ha Jin pads silently, the marble floor cold under her feet. She has no idea where she is going, or what that place is. She simply trusts her instinct to keep going and surrenders herself to the urge to find him. So is somewhere here - in this hollow home.

The silvery light is coming from the water in a vast pool, lit by its own underwater lights. The stairs lead her there and stop short of the rough tiles leading into the steps half emerged in water.

There she sees him after what now feels like forever to her.

His skin is tanned from water and sun. Muscles ripple under the bronze of his skin. With his back to her, Hwang So rises breaking the silvery surface and rivulets of water drain down his sculpted torso, coating him in silver for a fragment of a moment.

Something tenses inside her, like a spring pressed down and Soo can no longer breathe.

**
The woes of land are washed away in water. So finds himself giving into the allure of its familiarity. Tension coils inside him, tighter and tighter it twists around his spine. He bears the weight of too many memories on his weary shoulders, too much desire, too much greed, too heavy a burden. And the eye of all the whirling emotions is still asleep upstairs.

He chases away that particular thought with vengeance. Not his. Not his. Not meant to be his. He chants in his head.

He could give her nothing but pain and scars. He knows it too well and is reminded of the same every time they cross paths.

The scalding burns of the last encounter with his mother are cooling off, leaving the bitter ice of regrets and stings of guilt. Once again she is hurt because of him.
His too pure, too kind, too good to be real Ha Jin… only not his anymore.

He curses himself for not being strong enough to resist his own heart, curses fate for bringing them together again and again. God knows, he could not go through with losing her all over again - no man is made of steel.

“You lied to me…” Her voice is a sharp sting of a whip, he tenses before he turns around, sending ripples around the pool only to find her too close than he would have endured. In the silver of the pool lights she looks paler than she is, a beautiful ghost from his past, submerged to her waist and staring up at him with those bottomless eyes of hers, Hae Soo makes a picture that compels him swallow.

“Hae Soo…”

“You asked me before - what I remember…” She says.

Water slashes as she glides closer and his eyes rake over her face, trails down to what is visible of her figure before snapping back to her eyes. They are cold but not in an insensitive way.

“You left me with a unilateral goodbye to a fate I never had a say in. I remember that.”

He tries to tear his gaze away from hers, but her intent eyes never leaves his.

“You were my first friend, my first date, my first kiss - I remember that.”

“Soo -”

“I’m not Soo, I’m Ha Jin!” her tone rises against his resistance. “Don’t you dare make a stranger out of me.”

“It’s all in the past,” he manages to say, finally. Her fingers touch him tentatively, playing with the threads of his control as they run up his arms and So tries to hold on to his resolve. “We are nothing to each other now.”

The hurt that flashes across her eyes almost makes him take his words back. So clenches his jaw and wishes her to take them on face value.

“Nothing?” She repeats blankly. “How easily you say that. How easily you walk away. Do I really mean so little to you?”

Her palm lies against his heart and it twitches with the pain he inflicts upon her. It hurts now - but not forever.

“And what of Wook?” He asks roughly. “Where do you stand with him? Tell me, Hae Soo - do you want me to fight my brother for you?”

She freezes, retreating her hands, moving away. Her heart bleeds through her eyes and she makes no effort to wipe her tears away.

“And do you want me to marry him?” Her voice is shrill, burning with nameless fears - doubts that swim in her eyes, where he invoked them. “You would cast me away? Who am I to you? A toy you are done with, a wanton woman who tries to seduce her future brother in law?” She winces at the acid of her own words, disgust etching into her features.

He makes no move to correct her and she sighs in defeat.

“Then you shouldn’t have saved me Hwang So, for I will always follow you, hold your hand, cry for you and -”

He steals her words from her lips itself, driven to the edge of his resolve by the pain he had caused. She would not listen - his fool. She would not be driven away, no matter how hard he tries. And perhaps some wicked part of his mind had always wanted her to persist, pressure him until he is breaking around her.

Her lips are soft, easily yielding, molding around his with slightest of pressures. He breathes her in, that citrusy lavender of her perfume and the tingling freshness of her dump skin. The heat of her skin seeping through wet clothing to meet his palm at her back. He runs it up and down, bringing her closer, crushing her against him. The thumb of his other hand strokes circles against her cheek, sliding down to caress her throat, the sharp blade of her shoulder, slipping inside the dump layer of her blouse to claim the heated skin inside.

She shivers at his touch, goosebumps dotting all over her skin. Her arms lock around his neck and his falls to her hips, hoisting her off the water and flush against him. She makes a sound from the base of her throat, that has his head reeling. He traces the outline of her lips with his tongue and tugs gently at her fuller lower lip. She gives in, succumbing to her own need than his, deepening the kiss and takes as much as she gives. She tastes like rain, hint of a slightly smoky after taste of bitter orange blossoms left on her tongue.

The drenched layer of clothing does very little to separate them and he can feel her heart thundering against his. Lost in the currents of their own throbbing pulse, she throws her head back hands scraping his shoulders as he dips his mouth to her throat, right where her scent is strongest, where her pulse is fluttering against her skin.

“Ah - So…!” Incoherent whispers fall from her trembling lips as her fingers knot in his hair. She pulls him up, pressing urgent kisses against his lips, until he groans and takes her mouth again.

His tongue slides over her lips again and he catches the metallic hint of blood. Unbidden images surge his mind.

A lake - a boat - a smiling woman as brilliant as the sunlight - stars - snow - her large brown eyes - blood - bruises, tears and an urn of ashes.

“No!”

He pulls away, his heart loud in his ears, his lips tingling and his lungs burning. His eyes darts back to her, drenched, tousled, lips swollen and eyes glittering. The beast inside him reaches for her, desperate enough to rip part his rib cage and jump out to claim her.

The opposite of love is not hatred. It is throwing away…

“No!” He crushes his own heart. “No.”

“So…”

He does not listen, instead he runs away, keen on putting distance between him and her. Enough to keep her safe. Enough to keep her alive.

For he will not watch her die - again.