Crash Landing on You - Edelweiss Diaries

Part 1 - A Long game

"I'm sorry abeonim," Jeong Hyuk said unable to face his father.

"I'm just glad you are back," his father said after a long pause.

Dazed at his father's open avowal of concern, Jang Hyuk turned to face him. "You came back alive, so it's fine." His father's words left him speechless.

"Is Yoon Se Ri alright?"

Yoon Se Ri, he repeated in silence feeling the abyss of pain inside him.

"Yes," he said turning away, as a sudden stream of tears slid down his cheek.

"Are you crying now?" His father sounded more perplexed at his display of vulnerability.

The distance was real and their future inexistent. The dash of tears couldn't show the despair that caged him.

Once home, his omeonim's endless tears of joy were a welcome distraction. Finding her son safely back home, her eyes shone with relief. In her overwhelm, she busied herself to serve him a meal, muttering to herself that everything will fall into place soon for her family again.

Despite being home, the belonging felt incomplete and he desperately tried to wash away the lacking in the shower. The steam scalded his skin, but it would do nothing to expunge the void.

Even as he dragged himself across the room to reach his bed, the warmth on his skin faded. His mother came by coercing him to eat, but his father stepped in asking that she let him be.

For hours he lay in his bed, fighting his wakefulness. When the single tick of a clock lasted an eon, he went down to grab himself a bottle of liquor and a shot glass. Wearing only a thin sleeved shirt, he stepped into the frigid darkness of the sunroom where the cold couldn't wade past the numbness he already felt inside.

"I hope you are not that stupid," his father spoke from behind his chair and made his way to start a fire.

Jeong Hyuk couldn't tell what his father was referring to. When he didn't respond, Director Ri went inside to fetch himself a glass to drink with his son.

As he poured his father a glass of soju, he found his father eyeing his ring finger. Any other day, he might have been self-conscious, but today his father's chiding wouldn't cut through anything.

"You have gone past the DMZ twice." His father declared unawares of Jeong Hyuk's follies.

"Thrice." He corrected.

"Are you proud of that?" The elder's knuckles gripping the chair handle turned white.

His father downed the glass of liquor and held the bridge of his nose in surrender. With the exception of a few sighs, his father didn't break the allaying quiet for a while.

"Yoon Se Ri's parents know who you are?" His father finally settled into a tone of inquiry.

"No. The NIS agents maintained that I was an NK agent with her family."

His father rolled his eyes. "Does Yoon Se Ri know?"

"Yes abeonim."

"And yet, she accepted a ring from you?" Director Ri's eyes held disbelief, as he took a file folder from the side table drawer and placed it in front of him.

Upon opening the file, he found a tabloid cutting with a picture of Se Ri alongside a zoomed-in shot of her hand with the ring he had presented her. Her smile tore into him when the finality of the divide between them felt intractable. He closed the file and got to his feet to open a window.

Whatever chance he had of getting back to her again was possibly destroyed. There was no way to confirm if the Military Director, though dead now, had already spread the word that the General Political Bureau's Director's son had crossed into enemy territory to bring Yoon Se Ri back to NK. Adding in the tabloid article of a mystery man in Yoon Se Ri's life, it wouldn't take long for his father's other rivals to catch on. Unknowingly, he had perchance exposed her to bigger perils.

"If you love Yoon Se Ri enough to keep her safe, then back off Jeong Hyuk." His father issued an ultimatum. "Don't go running back to her again."

He exhaled allowing the words to sink into him, as he continued to peer out the window. "At least not yet." His father amended.

She'd taken a bullet for him and he wouldn't dare risk putting her in harm's way again, even if that meant she would hurt missing him. In that instant, he felt the same as the helpless twenty three year old sitting at the boardwalk by the lake before he left for his brother's funeral. Old regrets whispered shrill that he refrain from creating new ones.

His father addressed him again when Jyeong Hyuk remained still. "You must first learn to disappear. If you stand out, you give away Yoon Se Ri to them."

Director Ri's instruction intrigued him. "The best way to be invisible is to not be different than the people you surround yourself with."

He met his father's eyes that gave away he knew what his son might be up to. "Show me that you can think ten steps ahead of the others who are trained like you. Then perhaps, I may not have to hold onto my position to cover your missteps."

For all the years his father had served as a political strategist, Jeong Hyuk had never been the one to receive his father's advice. "You have to think of the long game, Jyeong Hyuk." His father came to stand by him, placing an assuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't fall for the short game."

That night, as he pondered on the long game he needed to play, he eventually found a semblance of equilibrium in his state of being. He traced the ring once more - the circle of hope that tied them together.

"Just wait and pray desperately," he reminded himself in quiet.

As of that moment, he didn't know if there was a road that would take him to her. But, he would search until he found one.

For he knew she would do the same.