Dark Embrace [Hoseok FF] [SOF Prequel 0.2] ✔

Chapter 12

(READ THIS AFTER SOF CHAPTER 31 AND 32)

Four of the windows were open facing the inner gardens, letting the sunlight stream in to make the room bright. The room was big, perhaps the biggest in the house, with it divided into various sections by huge and beautiful wooden room dividers.

The dividers were tall, intricately made with delicate and artistic designs, which were exquisitely beautiful and covered a long distance. Placed in various ways, the room had a receiving section, a bathing section, an open middle section and her sleeping corner.

Except of that, billowing red curtains were placed in the room, gathered by a tie. In front of windows, aside the bathtub, screening her bed behind which there would be absolute privacy.

Different lamps were distributed throughout the room, may it be the big ones, the glass ones, or the small earthen lamps placed in various spiralling tall rack holders having the place for 30 at a time.

The most beautiful handcrafted chairs, tables, were placed with a circular pool of water decorated with flowers gracing the room.

Aaya glanced around thinking about its beauty and elegance. It would absolutely not be a stretch to say that the splendour of the room could rival that of the Royal palace.

This was her chamber in the General's house, made exclusively for her, by, the General himself, where she had been residing for a month now.

Aaya looked out of the window to see the chirping birds sing in the inner garden the pavilion had, then she sat down on the parapet of the circular pool of water in her room. A month had passed since she had been brought here.

In that time, a lot had changed. . . .

She still remembered the first 2 days when she was given a different room, a room that was much more humble than the one she had now.

Aaya had shut herself in the room, refusing to meet not only Hoseok but also anyone else. She refused any food or any other items except water. At that time, she was in a state which was not easily describable.

She felt the burden of the deaths of the family who had sheltered her for nineteen years, because even if the one to end their lives had not been her, without her, their lives would have not been extinguished.

But most shameful had been the emotion that . . . . . . she had been feeling guilty for feeling happy at being free from them.

She had loathed herself for not being able to hate the murderer. Because even if she tried with everything she had, she could not hate a person who did not kill for the sake of it, nor did he kill because that was the only way he knew.

No, Hoseok ended them, to save her.

These emotions conflicted with her shame, so much so that she ended up isolating herself from everything, creating her own suffering.

It had been Nana who had asked the door to be broken after her refusal to allow her entry, that she strode in to shake her up.

"Creating a prison for yourself to feel better is the sign of a coward, Aaya. Rather than shying away from the truth, why don't you experience the life you have got a chance at now to ascertain if your feelings were correct? Why don't you take this chance to know, whether your happiness at this freedom was your selfishness or your right?"

Her words had been as truthful as it had been bitter, more so when Nana had sighed,

"Aside from this, you punishing the one who is desperate for your smile by dragging him through hell for doing something you cannot bring yourself to admit, brought you happiness, is you being supremely selfish. You are making the other falsely feel that he has gravely hurt you because you cannot bring yourself to show the world that you feel relieved that he took a decision, freeing you from its responsibility? I am disappointed in you child. I am. . . . . . truly disappointed."