𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑺𝑰𝑫𝑬 | 𝐊. 𝐆𝐖 - 𝐢𝐯. 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐢𝐭 𝐮𝐬

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3 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐬 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭

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“I think you look rather handsome.”

Nari adorned a wide smile on her face, her fingers interlocked with his warm and larger ones  that gently swayed at their side. His jacket hung loosely around her shoulders, her other hand clutching around a dripping ice cream cone the began seeping in between her fingers and dribbled onto the pavement below.

Geon-woo huffed, dejected and devoid of ice cream as he had earlier seemed to trip over air and watch with a crestfallen stare as it smooshed to the ground. He had lamented for twenty minutes before Nari had taken him back to the quaint store and bought him a new one which he had consumed in less time than it had taken for her to pay for it (with his card of course- not that he minded anyway).

“Stop touching it, you look great” Nari scolded at the frown on his face. Geon-woo’s fingers tugged at his shortened hair, styled back and out of his face, revealing the very prominent scar on his face and the discomfort in his eyes. If you had seen the before and after of his transformation, Geon-woo’s new look came off as rather scary and intimidating, Nari just found him a hundred times more attractive.

His hair had grown over the two months since she had awoken and it had reached past his ears, just before his shoulders. But while Nari actually thought he looked quite cute with it, he did not share the same sentiment and wanted it cut immediately. Hence, their current situation. Nari did not want him to go alone as it seemed men’s hair had the same affect as women’s makeup and she was not about to let him ruin it, so she tagged along with the excuse of a date afterwards.

Life had not been kind to them in the past few months, but they had adapted as they usually did. Quick and ardent. Grief had been loomed over them like a dark cloud for months and Nari couldn’t sleep without waking to night terrors and horrible images of her dead family embedded behind her eyelids. The group of four had gotten used to the screams in the middle of the night. They were restless and broken and only had each other to keep them from falling apart.

Mr Oh had kindly offered up his little home in the countryside for them to recover and think of a plan. In the meantime Nari’s heart was torn between vengeance and wanting to visit her brother and Ms Yoon again- the last remaining family they were fighting to protect.

Nari had visited soon after she was discharged, not really having the heart to tell her brother why she had suddenly disappeared for over a month and she could not bring herself to explain to the young boy why people they considered family would not be seeing them ever again. She would cross that bridge when she had to- but in that moment where she had hugged her little brother so tight she didn’t care that pain flared in her chest – maybe from her wound or maybe from her bleeding heart, she wasn’t too sure.

 Nam-gi didn’t understand why his sister held onto him as if she would lose him if she let go. He didn’t understand why her eyes grew teary and she tried to muffle her sobs in his hair as she tightened her hold on him. He didn’t understand why she kept muttering apologies in his ear but most of all he didn’t understand why Geon-woo and Ms Yoon were looking at them in pity and heartbreak.

Nam-gi just didn’t understand how broken his sister truly was and how she was trying to keep her pieces together enough to not let him see her break completely. Nam-gi didn’t understand how hard his sister was fighting for him. But he did understand that he was her everything and that she needed him in that moment. So, he lifted his arms around her and hugged her back just as fervently and Nari collapsed to her knees and let her grief consume her.

Three months later and the heaviness of their loss still ripped them apart. There was not a day that passed where she did not think of them. Every time she saw Hyeon-ju, Mr Choi’s face flashed in her mind. His consoling smile and the fleeting feeling of his hand on hers. Every time she saw a family and their child her heart broke for Mi-kyung and Du-yeong. Whenever she glimpsed at the small, rolled delicacy her mind drifted to Yang-jung and Mr Kwan and she would sway on her feet and be thrust into a nightmare of sorrow and regret. But every time she felt herself slip, she felt a hand tether her back to reality and pull her from her depths of her self-loathing.

Geon-woo had been her anchor as much as she had been his.

Whenever the two found each other spiralling, the other was there, with an extended hand and a small smile ready to catch each other if they fell. While the three have been anything but kind, Geon-woo had Nari. Two broken and damaged souls had found a different, imperfect peace within each other. And slowly but surely, with determination and vigor in their blood, they had moved in a direction of happiness. Because that’s what they would’ve wanted. What they had always wanted for them. A life of happiness, without Smile Capital. And they almost had it. They just had to keep fighting a little longer.

” I will chop off your hand if you keep ruining it” Nari chastised, parting their hands to swat at his. He pouted, a stark contrast to his intimidating demeanour before interlacing their fingers again, lifting their hands to press an apologetic kiss to her knuckles. If Nari wasn’t so exasperated, she may have melted like the ice cream in her hand.

“Fine, I will take your word for it” he told her with a small cave-in smile and Nari’s lips quirked into a bashful grin. A feeling of happiness since that night blossomed in her chest, a feeling she did not want to let go ever again.

She had finished off her ice cream as the afternoon sun beat down upon the couple. In a small town away from the big and daunting city, they had grown accustomed to the quiet countryside, not too far from the orphanage where Nam-gi and Ms Yoon resided and not far from the school where Nam-gi now attends. It was peaceful, the fresh rural air, gentle community and no Smile Capital to hound on them.

Nari adored it.

Her thoughts drifted to one night at the sight of the mountain tops making their view.

Nari and Gen-woo were laying on the sleeping mats Mr Oh had provided for them, a spare room the two shared while Woo-jin slept on the floor in the lounge and Hyeon-ju the couch. It was one of the nights she had been tossing and turning and had woken whilst it was still dark and the stars gleamed in the sky to Geon-woo hovering over her, concerned and tired with moonlight illuminating him in a vibrant glow. Neither had slept the remainder of the night and instead, she had laid back down, Geon-woo draped over her stomach with his head above her heart as she absentmindedly toyed with his hair, her eyes locked on the quiet mountains landscape.

“Could you see yourself living here?” she had asked softly. Geon-woo hummed a reply into her chest, his eyes shut at the feeling of her fingers in his hair.

“Maybe” he had answered softly. “What makes you say that?” he asked and she lightly shrugged.

“I don’t know” she answered as the stars glimmered in the blanket of darkness. Something you would not see in bright and nauseating Seoul.” There’s something abut the quiet life. People here are so lively, you know” she told, her voice low and wistful. ” Everyone helps each other, they look after one another. There’s a community. It’s everything you need without the burden of a city life. They’re-”

“happy” he finished, glancing at her as she nodded, her smile turning longing.

“Yeah, they’re happy” she echoed, sparing him a glance as she smiled.

“You think you could be happy here?” he asked, the moon gleaming in his eyes.

“We could be” she drawled and his heart stuttered at the term ‘we‘. ” We wouldn’t have to worry about people like Kim Myeong-gil. Your mother seems to enjoy the orphanage and maybe we could help her in opening a café this side. Mr Oh turned his garage into a gym for us, you could still do boxing and Nam-gi’s school is down the road. Woo-jin and Hyeon-ju could move in. ” she paused. ” We could all be happy” she continued softly. “We could have a life, away from everything”

” Then let’s do it” he affirmed, and Nari’s fingers stilled in his hair. She glanced down at him, surprise in her eyes but he was looking up at her with conviction in his brown eyes. ” When this is all over, let’s do it.”

“Geon-woo” she called his name warily, but he merely shook his head, lifting himself onto his forearms to look at her sincerely. ” I’m serious Nari” he told her, his fingers brushing her hair away from her eyes so she could see how sincere he was being. ” There’s nothing left for us back in Seoul, we could move here and start over. You and I, together. We can be happy.”

Tears had gathered in her eyes of which he smiled at assuringly. His beautiful, sincere and heartwarming smile she loved so much. The type of smile she put her blind faith and trust in. The type of smile that promised her the world.

“You mean it” she asked hopefully, the moon being their witness.

” With my life I mean it.” he promised her. ” Anything you want, it’s yours” he said and Nari leaned forward, a twinkle in her eyes and captured his lips with hers and the deal was made and secured and the night had watched their promise be sealed in a kiss.

When this was all over, they’d finally be happy and free and together.

Nari waved as an elderly woman hobbled past them with a gummy smile. The town had been more than welcoming when they found out they were close to Mr Oh, who had been a pillar in the quaint town. And with Geon-woo’s politeness, Nari’s heart, Woo-jin’s charisma and Hyeon-ju’s temperament, they had become the talk of the town and everyone had found the group of four rather charming. Nari felt like this could be home if they made it through with their plan.

” I’m convinced he’s still trying to set you up with his granddaughter” Nari whispered as they passed by a deli clerk. The owner was a jovial old man who had taken a particular liking to Geon-woo who, despite politely declining the man of his intention of trying to marry off the already taken man to his very much single granddaughter, did not know the meaning of giving up. He was a stubborn and determined old man.

” He is unrelenting.” Geon-woo chuckled. “Just the other day he had dropped off a fruit basket to the house, said it was free of charge and he was welcoming us to the neighbourhood. He was trying to set me up on a tour date” he told Nari who grinned.

” I thought I made it very obvious that I’m a very taken man who is dangerously in love with his very beautiful girlfriend” Geon-woo said, his lips brushing her ear as the two turned to shoot said man a wave as they passed by his store.

” Haven’t I said flattery gets you nowhere” she teased as he leaned down to kiss her cheek as the elderly man caught their gesture of affection and sighed before he straightened, and Nari knew he refused to stand down from a challenge. However, she found it rather amusing and so did Geon-woo who was watching her as she smiled politely at the man.

“It did get me you” he told her and Nari fought off her smile, rolling her eyes as he slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to him as they strolled back to Mr Oh’s house on the hill.

“Touche” she grinned as his airy chuckle rang as crisp as the air. Nari let the swell of love and happiness erupt in her chest at the sound and she couldn’t have been happier. That was until she had received a text and reality had come crashing down on her fairytale dream once more. 

It seemed nothing truly lasted forever. 

STOP THEY’RE SO CUTE

I love them sm😭😭💕

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