He buys it on a whim then worries halfheartedly. The delicate design makes him pause. Last reaction to a gift he brought for someone had left a sore impression that he knows not how to imagine what her reaction would be. Still he clutches it in a closed palm and swallows - recalling the fire in her eyes the last time they had looked into his.

So always associated Peonies with Ha Jin, one of the reasons it being her favorite flower. He remembered the scent of their crushed petals on her hands when she had tended to him before - leaving the flowers lying on the ground at the threshold. The memory makes him pause - she had been disappointed of him. He unfolds his palm with a sigh. The porcelain Peony lies there, delicate thin white petals unfurling from a shell pink pearl lying in the middle, tendrils of pink bleeding into the petals. The flower which looked as fragile as if it was real, but eternal in its form hang from a striking silver chain now nestled in a cold coil against the skin of his palm.

He lifts his eyes cautiously, for she hadn’t said a word since, and steals a look at her reaction. Her eyes remained lowered, studying the creation presented before her and her lashes cover their expression. So swallows again.

“Do you like it?” His curiosity makes him question, for a moment her eyes flicker into his. He holds his breath for a moment, something dark and twisted about his mother ghosting over his conscious. She turns away without a word. A wince - a stab of pain, he stumps on it before the emotion unfurls. But instead of walking off, her fingers reach behind and sweeps her hair over her shoulder bearing the milky expense of the back of her neck.

“You can throw it away if you -”

Her sigh is soft, a faint crush of petals.

“Put it on…”

A spot of warmth pulses inside his chest, growing larger with each step he takes towards her. His fingers tremble when he works on the tiny clasp to undo it. The silver against her pale skin shimmer like moonlight and his exhale comes out short, trickling against her ear. He feels the shiver that runs across her skin at the contact. His heart skips a beat, drunk on something novel and elating. So lets his fingers brush against the soft skin at her nape and hears her breath catch.

“Ha Jin - ah…” He breathes out her name, lips against her ear, tips of his fingers trailing a path down her throat towards her shoulder. She purrs, nestling against the curve of his neck, brushing her cheek against his throat. The words escape his lips on a whim too - pent up for so long, watered in silence - a feeling he could no longer withhold. “I love you.”

She stills for a moment, a breath held within her rigid body, still leaning and pressed against him - but too startled. His fears catch up too fast for him to hold on to that moment and he continues without pausing for her reply. “I don’t want to hear it back - I just want to make sure you know.”

She turns around, the peony he had tied around her throat tossing at the motion before setting delicately close to her pulse. It is hard to continue when she is watching him with that expression in her mild brown eyes, so he swallows again. “You don’t have to feel the same now that you know perhaps I’m not what you imagined first when you fancied me…”

His words hang awkwardly between them, until she reaches out to caress his face. Tips of her fingers are cold as ice, her lashes flutter when she draws close. “Now that you know, you’ve seen - bad things - I’m afraid you don’t feel the same way.”

“When I first stalked you,” she chooses the words with a hint of laughter, her lips curl upwards at the memory. “You weren’t my celebrity crush.”

She reads the surprise in his eyes quite well and leaves her palm resting against his cheek. “You reminded me of a boy I knew as a kid.”

His eyes narrow a little, and she presses on before he works out another worry.

“But you are nothing like him and it is you I’m in love with.”

“Ha Jin - ah -”

“Shh,” her finger presses against his lips, drawing him closer under its thrall until their foreheads are pressed together. “Like you said, I’m just letting you know.”

His exhale is a reverent sigh and he kisses her fingertip.

“I’m scared.”

“Of me?” She chuckles.

“Of me - of me hurting you,” he admits in the end. “They say I’m awful, I’m a monster - I’m scared those things are true. What if - what if something is indeed wrong with me? What if - everything that happened turns me in to…”

He finches at her touch, for it is so unfamiliarly gentle but forceful enough to make him look at her. There is no punishing power of his mother’s hands, there is none of the wrath of her talons.

“I’m so afraid to hold on to what I long - for I know, you deserve better…”

“But I want you -” she tells him. There are no frills or floss to her raw honesty. “For me you are better. Know your own worth So - any idiot can be happy if they are mollycoddled, it takes a lot more courage to withstand that hell you call home. ” Her breath against his skin feels like promises seared into it. “And you’ll have me - you’ll have me till the very end.”

Her kiss against his lips is chaste a touch that is barely there. But he feels the warmth in the tips of his fingers, as if he had been cold all his life until the moment their lips touched. The memory blurs in and out and a fire burns against his ribs. Conscious drags him through needles of pain and awareness as the dark is replaced with his own ragged breathing. The drug is wearing off and lying face down on the freezing ground So could feel life returning to his limbs.

His own blood is rusty against his tongue, cold air settles like coal at the pit of his lungs. He is unbound because Wook apparently has too much trust on his medicine, So only briefly wonders on whom he might have tested it before. When his eyes flicker open, adjusting to the dark they had grown accustomed to his ears are trained on the sound that tears through the blanket of silence fallen over them. Thump - thump - thrash! It continues.

It takes a lot more time than he had intended to for his brain to regain functions of his limbs. He gets to his feet clumsily, stumbling and staggering a bit, before he could graze a palm against the rough stone wall. In the darkness he feels his way forward until the uneven stone is replaced by hard unpolished wood of a door. The thrashing sound continues from inside.

He slams against it bearing his weight on his shoulder. It takes a few tries, for he is worn out and the aching bones protest against causing any more damage. But in the end the door flings open and the sound dies down.

His eyes fall on the woman gagged and bound to the chair, who is stumping her feet on the ground and kicking everything within her reach. Hair tousled and face covered in grime her eyes are large as she stares at his bloodied figure.

“Yeon Hwa?”

**

Jung puts it all away for later. It was his fault that Yo was discovered, for had he not opened the door, careless in his urgency to inform his mother of Wook’s duplicity, the wind would not have shut the other door Yo had opened in a crack, listening to the conversation happening inside. However everything since had been crystal to him - enough that he had completely scrapped the idea of getting his mother’s help. The new revelations thumped against his head - choked his breath.

Wook was no adopted brother of his! But a son of his own mother!

He waits in the shadows that are well known to him until the derailed Wook makes his way out of the room. A part of him is confident that he could appeal to his mother and make her see sense. There is still a tender part to her - he realizes as he watches her sponging Yo’s face, tears draining down her own cheeks. But something holds him back - this was not what she should have done - that part of him says. She should have held Wook back, knocked some sense into him - if not before - now that she has seen the full capacity of his madness. She could move Yo - now that she knows full well what Wook has in store for him. But she does neither - she does none. Instead she cries over things she could very well repair. No - his mother is of no help.

He waits in the shadows and wonders how long it will take for her to move, for he still has no intention of taking her to police. She is his mother - he would not be the one to cuff her. As if by divine invention her mobile starts to ring. He watches holding his breath as she coos and pleads with the person on the other end - watches how something wicked flash through her eyes for a moment just before the call ends.

With her eyes closed and the mobile clutched in her hand - he watches his mother coming up with a new scheme. Now that his blinds have been torn off - he sees it for what it is. An scheme that would twist their lives further. She leaves a minute later, locking the door behind Yo stranded in one of her many store rooms. For all proclamations of love - Jung inhales deeply.

He wonders only briefly at how deserted the office complex is, but of cause if her previous conversation with Wook was anything like what he witnessed after - Jung is sure his mother would send all her staff away before inviting him in. He is grateful to the years he had left playing hide and seek until he knows every nook and cranny in this place only for a moment too. An unconscious Yo is heavy enough to slow him down, with his arm fling over his shoulder and his weight supported by his own bulky arms, Jung curses silently before dragging his brother down the steps leading to the back entrance.

Yo blearily looks at him when he has put some breathable distance between that shadowy place and their car, bolting towards the highway at the highest speed he could master. Some air returns to his lungs but Jung dares not to ponder upon it. Before he could work out his words, Yo’s hand curls on his collar.

“Are you working for him?” His tone is gruff, distrusting enough for him to flinch. “Answer me Jung!” His fingers are unforgiving, reaching further to grab his throat.

“Hyung -” is all he manages to breath through his tightening airway. Yo sighs and groans before his hand slips away to cradle his own head. Jung flexes his shoulder, annoyed a bit.

“Nice return for saving your worthless hide,” he mumbles. “Going to choke me are you?”

“Where are you taking me?” The distrust is still there.

“For now away from Wook Hyung, you need to tell me the specific place - but I guess it will not be hospital.”

Yo shakes his head slowly, as if testing the boundaries of his concession and looks at the fingers of his own hand, curling and uncurling them.

“No.” He says shortly before feeling his pockets for his mobile. “Did you see my phone?”

Jung reaches into his glove compartment and hands his brother his own mobile instead.

“Nope.” He says. Yo doesn’t take the mobile, instead he settles down on the seat with a whimper before instructing. “Dial the number I tell you, I won’t see clearly for few hours thanks to the blow Wook dealt me. And put the phone on speaker.”

“Prosecutor Nim?” Pours in Mun Seong’s voice before either of the brother’s gets a chance to put a word edgewise. “Oh sorry - I was waiting for another call…” she continues once she might have noticed the number flashing on her screen. “How may I -”

“Manager Park -” groans Yo.

“Prosecutor Nim? Are you on your way? Why do you sound -”

“What do you mean on my way?” Yo cuts in.

“What do you mean - I just messaged you the address right? The one I pulled out from the old records of the investigation - the location of the chip?”

Yo curses loud enough for her to pause and ask. “Prosecutor nim?”

“Mun Seong - ah, send word for reinforcement to that location. I think you’ve just put someone in a very serious trouble.”