Falling Blossoms COMPLETED!

Chapter Nine

At the beginning of November, everyone around me was getting tense. I was out with Xiumin one day getting some air when he told me that everyone was worried about the possibility of me going into premature labor. After assuring him that I wasn't stressing anything at that point, just taking things a day at a time, and seeing my doctors as scheduled, he finally felt comfortable enough to leave me down by the Han River long enough to go get something to eat while I just took in the view and the cool autumn afternoon breeze. Neither of us could've thought to expect what happened next.

"I never would've guessed the guys were telling me the truth," Heechul said sitting next to me on the bench.

"What do you want, Heechul?" I asked him.

"I wanted to see for myself," he started.

"What am I? A freak show?" I asked, offended.

"No, Hea," he replied. "I couldn't believe you were pregnant. I'm not making fun of you."

"Since when?" I asked him suspiciously.

"Look, the night of your wedding..." Heechul started. "Kangin and Jackson Wang made me realize I was never fair to you. While I've always protected what I knew as my family from the time I was a baby, it was Appa who messed up, not you. I'm sorry it's taken me nearly 29 years to admit that to you, Hea, but I never should've blamed you for what Appa did to my mother. It was just easier than to think the man I'd looked up to was an asshole."

"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked him.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Especially after what Jackson Wang said to me, I don't deserve, nor do I expect you to just forgive me, Hea. At times, I was really cruel to you."

"You really were, Heechul," I confirmed. "You took more than just my job at SM when you threw Key under the bus in 2011. You took my first love from me. It broke both of our hearts."

He looked at me, shocked.

"You actually loved him?" he asked me.

I nodded at him.

"I had never considered that possibility," he said. "No wonder he punched me in the mouth after Leeteuk told him what I'd done."

"I know what he did," I told him. "You deserved it, Heechul."

"Why didn't you ever do anything to stop me, Hea?"

"I never understood as a kid what I had done to make you hate me, so I didn't know that you shouldn't be treating me the way you were, Heechul," I started explaining. "I didn't figure that out until I met the Wangs. By the time I came back... I wasn't the same little girl anymore, Heechul. My life wasn't about trying to understand why I always wanted to cry when I had to see my Oppa and Eonni. I finished high school, I trained to be a bodyguard, and when I came home to Seoul, my past was just that, my past. I was ready to start over. It's why I never engaged you. But why did you bring Abeoji to Seoul after me? I know you don't want to believe me, but he did hit me, Heechul."

"I was so angry that you had gotten around me trying to get you fired, I just called him," he replied. "I told him how I saw things happening at SM, even if that wasn't how things really were."

"I never slept with Key," I told him. "I hadn't slept with anyone until after I got married last year."

"You're lying!" he said, staring at me. "Who stays a virgin until they're nearly 28 years old anymore? Especially when they've been in a steady relationship for as long as the two of you had apparently been?"

"I did," I told him. "I had been on tour with G-Dragon for almost the entire time Hyunseong and I were together, Heechul. He's three years younger than I am. I had been hurt before. We weren't in a rush for anything. When we did have time together, we just wanted to be able to make memories together. It wasn't about sex. Our relationship was never conventional or easy, but we made it work for all this time."