Director Ri's phone rang just as he was about to leave for the bureau office.
"Yes," he carefully avoided the anxiety that began to flood his voice.
"Director Ri, it didn't go well at the exchange." The man on the other end of the line hesitated. "Yoon Se Ri Dongmu also turned up there and Captain Ri ended up crossing the DMZ line again."
His father fell back into the chair. "Did either of them get hurt?"
"Thankfully, no, Director Ri," the agent clarified in a hurry. "Yoon Se Ri Dongmu too is safe. But I just got word that the Military Director's convoy was cleared at the Pyongyang city limits towards Sariwon. I think it's happening, Director Ri."
"Ok. Get our men moving. I'll meet you there." He hung up without waiting for the other man to acknowledge.
Director Ri, scoffed. He expected his Jeong Hyuk would rebel at some point in his life, but never did he believe he would be well into his thirties or do so over a woman. Director Ri had not expected him to pull out of his piano studies without a fight when asked to join the army after Moo Hyuk had passed. He was surprised when Jeong Hyuk had accepted Seo Dan as his fiancee when the elders had finalized the wedding proposal without consulting him.
Moo Hyuk, his eldest was fairly outspoken, taking after his mother. However, when all his life he'd hardly seen his maknae fluster about anything, he'd assumed Jeong Hyuk was more like him. Still waters, he'd presumed; his son was as the still waters of the ocean that kept its chaos in its underbelly. It turned out that his youngest could be that calm stream of running water that ebbs and flows or the raging tsunami that destroys everything in its way.
Jeong Hyuk, Director Ri, understood was his own man. Yoon Se Ri hadn't been his undoing, but the force of nature that had unearthed the man he really was - both a debonair son and a radical lover in one.
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He knew his father would come through for him. Always.
As they rode in the troubling silence of the car toward home, he felt abashed to have put an aging man in a position to kill the Military Director.
Upon entering the Sariwon forest, their convoy alone had turned right. His suspicion that they wouldn't allow him to stand trial held water. The incriminating evidence he held against the Military director was reason enough. It was only a matter minutes before Jeong Hyuk and his men were being held at gunpoint. There was nothing left to negotiate between him and the Military Director, when he pulled out his glock and pointed at Jeong Hyuk.
Man Bok threw himself in front of the gun, but he wouldn't let another man pay for his foibles. Dragging Man Bok around, Jeong Hyuk gave him cover by putting himself in danger's path.
The shriek of the end swept through him. "Yoon Se Ri, Abeonim, Omeonim," he'd called out to within himself. "I'm sorry."
He heard the shots first. But, alongside his father's booming voice too reached him, freezing the Military Director to the spot.
"Military Director didn't I tell you that you cannot carry out an execution without interrogation and a trial?" Even as he ended, his father unloaded two bullets onto the Military director's chest and gut, handling the first of the many threats that awaited his son's return.
There was the weight of taking a man's life on his soul and then there was the tug of paternal love to protect the only son he's left with. Jeong Hyuk knew all that his father would have to do to bury the mountain of evidence against him and the family.
"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.