Finding You

CHAPTER 17

"Thank you," she muttered. "However, you cannot keep on doing this, Kim Tae Pyung."

"Doing what?"

"Going to places you shouldn't be," Eon Jin replied, her voice resolute but dismal. "Your mere presence is the variable that makes the completion of Fate's course in peril."

"Do you remember Kang Myeong Suk?" she asked him moments later. "He was supposed to die in that accident on the bridge. Yet, your arrival in the dark street where you saw me and Hyo Jin changed everything."

Tae Pyung tilted his head down and bit his lower lip as he contemplated on what Eon Jin told him.

"My life as the mistress is already complicated as it is," Eon Jin spoke in a soft voice. "Having you in the equation will not make it any better, Kim Tae Pyung."

"I never intended to be in your way," Tae Pyung murmured. "But I can't seem to stay away from you, especially after the memories I've seen so far."

Eon Jin turned to look at him, a frown forming on her face, and said, "Do not misinterpret your feelings for me in the present with that of your past self. The Kim Tae Pyung from more than three hundred years ago is different from the person you are now. Please do not forget that."

"I know," Tae Pyung agreed, but with reservations.

"Although it's true that I might be seeing you through his eyes, haven't you considered the tiniest possibility for me to end up falling in love with you even in this lifetime?" he asked shortly after.

"That does not make any sense, Kim Tae Pyung – and you know it," Eon Jin said with a faint laugh, turning away from him to avoid his eyes.

"Well, what does?" Tae Pyung challenged her, throwing a glance her way from the corners of his eyes. "Ever since our paths crossed, I met an actual grim reaper, witnessed souls being summoned from their lifeless bodies, and welcomed a quasi-deity who stirred up memories from my past life."

Knowing that everything he said was right, Eon Jin snorted and then told him in a voice that was almost apologetic, "There will be no happy endings here, Kim Tae Pyung. I hope you are ready for that."

They spent the following minutes in comfortable silence, sitting on their respective corners as they allowed themselves to get lost in their thoughts. Tae Pyung pondered on Eon Jin's words while assessing his feelings, which, as far as he knew, were already starting to develop into something that might lead him to a point of no return. Eon Jin, on the other hand, went through the events of the evening in her mind as she sat cross-legged on her side of the sofa, trying to understand how the resurgence of the feeling of pity elicited a sudden change in her behavior.

"Can I ask you a question?" Tae Pyung requested a few moments later, capturing her attention.

"Ask away."

"What just happened back there? What made you so distraught over a situation you knew so well?"

Eon Jin shook her head and said, "That was my mistake. I behaved improperly as an emotion surfaced from a forgotten pit of my being, therefore overwhelming me."

"Sympathy," he whispered the moment he figured it out.

"Yes," Eon Jin confirmed. "The feeling was so strong that I had to fight the urge to intervene the moment I heard the woman's plea for her child."

"These memories from my past... They work like a double-edged sword," she added, talking more to herself than to Tae Pyung. "My limited knowledge of my previous life gives me a slight idea of who I was before this punishment and awakens the emotions I willingly felt when I was still a mortal. At the same time, getting reacquainted with such feelings makes me less invulnerable now, thus hindering me from carrying out my task flawlessly."