adora • lookism

9. Taejin Cheon (1)

Taejin Cheon, who was exactly the kind of man who would sooner beat someone half to death for leaving a crumb in his car than care if the person next to him starved to death, had recently found himself feeling rather troubled.

Taejin was not the sort who normally felt troubled by things. If ever he encountered any trouble worth dealing with, he simply thought of a solution and efficiently executed that solution with as much or as little violence as necessary. If a solution could not be immediately enacted, and violence could not be had, then he was very much capable of calmly enduring until the day came that he no longer needed to endure.

But should he ever have expected to feel troubled by anything, he would think it to at least be over such reasonable things as his business, his employees, or his control freak of an affiliate head.

Not over a pint of a girl who barely reached his shoulder.

••••

Laying still on the treatment bed, Taejin waited patiently for light fingers to pluck out the last few needles from his chest. He had been skeptical, at first, when Chairman Eugene had suggested acupuncture for the scar. It still panged with pain, occasionally, a pointless firing of damaged nerve synapses that hadn't quite healed properly, but it hadn't bothered him enough to seek any of the more extreme methods that Doctor Baek had suggested. (Skin grafting? He would honestly prefer to stand in front of an off-track train than go under Doctor Baek's knife.)

But the chairman had suggested it to him with no strings attached, and Taejin had been boredly curious as to what could have driven such a rational man to believe in something like acupuncture. If the acupuncturist gave off even the faintest stench of being Hangyul Baek's class of deranged, he had figured that he could easily get rid of them before any damage could be done.

Taejin had time. It costed nothing. And what could a few needles do to someone like him?

A lot, as it turned out.

But what surprised Taejin more than the acupuncture's real, if gradual, effect was the acupuncturist herself.

"That should do it for these guys," said Ari, skilfully flicking the final needle into a metal tray full of its fellows. Collecting the tray and the pile of wrappers that the needles had come packaged in, she made her way to the special disposal bin that had been installed in this room specifically for her use.

Taejin took the opportunity while she was turned away to draw his phone from his pocket and message Yisu Cho. He kept it brief, knowing that Ari didn't like for anyone to use their phones during an acupuncture session; by the time she had turned back towards him, the phone was already back in his pocket, his hand returned to its original position.

His eyes trailed after Ari as she returned to her tool cart, watching lazily as she sanitized her hands again, rubbing them vigorously to warm them up. Coming to stand next to him, she murmured, "I'll begin the massage now."

Ari reached out and gently laid her warmed palms over the unblemished part of his chest. She smoothed them in slow, circular motions towards the edges of his scar, as if to notify his body of what was about to happen.

Without a trace of reluctance, Taejin allowed himself to relax into the bed.

If Ari had gone directly for the scar the first time they had done this, he knew he would have instinctively tensed up, perhaps even lashed out. At the time he had expected it, even, having assumed inexperience from her young age. Now, though, there was a certain level of trust that made this particular process unnecessary.