Operatives || Park Sunghoon

18 | hurt

Thea's POV

It was five in the morning and we had already decided to leave the hotel since there was no point in staying for a couple of few hours. The entire night both of us had stayed up, either sitting in silence or calling people to ask how Heeseung was.

He was admitted to a hospital nearby the place where his car had crashed, just barely holding onto his life. He was still unconscious because of the injuries, and we had been assured that we would be called instantly if he shows signs of gaining conscious.

I was busy setting up the GPS to the next motel we were going to stay in, after keeping our belongings in the trunk while Sunghoon checked us out of the hotel.

"Done?" I asked him as he opened the car's door and sat beside me. He hummed in response, closing the door after him and then wearing the seatbelt. I nodded, starting the car and began driving out of the parking lot and onto the road, following the GPS.

We were in the car sitting silently for quiet some time while I drove when suddenly Sunghoon spoke up, breaking the silence.

"We should go back to Seoul tomorrow." He said, taking me by surprise. I turned my head around to glance at him and just saw him looking ahead at the road, not meeting my eyes.

"We can't. We have just found a lead and we, at least I can't afford to miss it." I said, completely rejecting his offer. He let out a deep sigh, clearly agitated.

"Look Thea—" He began, turning to face me, but I cut him off knowing he will just try to argue with me whether we should stay here or not. I took the left-most lane and stopped the car, since it was being very hard for me to drive with this type of tension in the air.

"We can't go back now, Sunghoon! Don't you understand?!" I said, almost yelling at him even though I didn't mean to. Both of us were pretty shaken since last night and it was really difficult to think about anything calmly without getting worked up over small things.

"My friend is in the bloody hospital right now barely alive and all you want me is to stay here and go on with this bullshit?!" He yelled back, clearly pissed off. I took a deep breath, trying not to go overboard with my anger.

"Look, I know everything sucks right now. Heeseung is my friend too—" I said, trying to explain it to him that he wasn't the only one worrying but he cut me off mid sentence, not letting me finish what I was trying to tell him.

"You guys just met barely a month ago!" He said, his anger taking control over his sense of being rational and thinking properly. "You don't know how much I'm worried right now." He snapped, turning his head to the front to look ahead. "You lost your friend already. I don't want to loose mine." He said softly, each word hitting me like a dagger in my heart. I knew he was suffering, I had been through it before already but I had never expected him to attack me like that.

Just to conclude, I was at loss of words. All those insults which we had hurled on each other before were nothing compared to this.

"Okay." I said, trying to ignore the sickening feeling in my stomach while I switched on the engine again, my hands feeling cold and my fingers numb against the steering wheel. "Good." I added after a few seconds, hitting back the road.

After about fifteen minutes, I noticed him shift uncomfortably on his seat trying to meet my eyes whenever he got the chance to but I completely ignored him, focused on the road.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that." He apologised, making me even more angrier than I already was. I kept quiet, trying not to talk to him because it would just result me in saying something harsh to him which was the last thing I wanted right now.

He got the hint that I was pretty upset over what he said, so he just sank back into his seat, looking outside his window.

"It's been around four months since I know Heeseung." I spoke up after a few minutes, breaking the uncomfortable silence in the car which had slowly started to become unbearable. 

"Huh?" He asked, confused, turning his head around to look at me. I didn't meet his eyes, instead I just focused on the GPS route and the road.

"I came here three months after the day I was transferred." I admitted, recalling the time when I had decided to change my country I was stationed in. "I was on a break from all this, trying to get my mind refreshed after all that time." I said, while turning the steering wheel to the right to take a turn. "It was hard for me to trust anyone, especially when my own guide was a childhood friend. So Mr. Brown gave me Heeseung's contact, so that I can talk to him and finally trust him." I added, letting out a sigh as we came to a stop at the red signal.

"Seriously?! Why didn't you say so? I thought you guys liked each other when we met for the first time!"