"Come down, here we are."
Yujin stared at the magnificent building in front of her, shuddering in horror. Still fresh in her mind how Jinwoo used to treat her rudely in the house. But she had determined herself to fight all those fears. All this time she had only pretended to look fine in front of everyone, including Jinwoo. But actually she was hiding such a great trauma in her head. Sometimes she had nightmares and saw Jinwoo kill her viciously. And that dream really kept her from sleeping well lately.
"You... won't choke me again right?"
Jinwoo gave Yujin a glance and gave the woman the grin that he often shows his enemies.
"We will see later."
Yujin tried to calm down by exhaling hard from her chest cavity. She must be able to fight her trauma.
"General Lee, why did you choose this house as your residence?"
Yujin couldn't help but be curious when they started to enter Jinwoo's house. This time they entered properly through the main door, not through the gloomy-looking basement door at the back of Jinwoo's house.
"This house fits me well."
Yujin observed the contents of Jinwoo's house which looked empty without any stuff in it. The man even only put a white sofa in the middle of the spacious living room and also a simple table in the middle. However, according to Yujin, the sofa and table were never used, only often cleaned once a week because the sofa looked very clean, as if it had never been occupied.
"Who has come to this house?"
"Hyuki and some of my men."
"You never invited women here?" Yujin asked intending to tease. But apparently Jinwoo took the question seriously.
"The only woman who has ever broken into my house is you. Luckily I didn't kill you at that time because I never liked it when other people intruded on my territory."
"Your house is nice, for a sociopath like you. Why do you hide it from other people? Is it because you used this house to execute your victims?"
Yujin is now in Jinwoo's reading room. She did not think that Jinwoo had a comfortable library and a fairly large collection of books. Yujin used the opportunity to find books that would interest her. But instead of looking at the books, Yujin was honestly more interested in their owners.
"I built this house not to show off but to dampen behavior. You know quite well that I am not a normal man like the men you have met so far. I am a murderer."
Yujin is quite sad about the man's words. Jinwoo had indirectly lowered himself. Even though the man was not that bad. Jinwoo still had a positive side that the man never realized.
"Don't look down on yourself General, you're not that bad."
Don't know where she have the courage, but right now Yujin was hugging Jinwoo's sturdy body from behind. Yujin leaned her head for a moment on the sturdy back before Jinwoo untied her arms and walked away from her.
"Come on, let me show you how to deal with your frustration."
Yujin followed Jinwoo's steps towards the dungeon that was used to torture his victims. When Yujin started descending the dark steps in front of her, she felt the hair on her neck a little shudder. In the past she had seen other people injured in that place and she had also been injured there.
She felt like she wanted to stop walking and go back to the comfortable reading room on the second floor. But she was determined to heal her fear, so she kept trying to step her feet down, following the wide arc of Jinwoo who had already reached the end of the stairs.
"General, why is it so dark? I can't see anything here. Ahhh..."
Yujin almost slipped on the slippery stone steps she was stepping on. It was fortunate that Jinwoo swiftly managed to pull his arm and keep it from falling rolling on the hard stone steps.
"Your carelessness can cost you your life, Miss Im."
Yujin snorted in annoyance. Always the man gave warnings with terrible words that she really didn't want to hear. Every now and then she wanted to hear Jinwoo say something romantic to her and make her soar with her gentle demeanor.
"Can you just be gentle once? No wonder you don't have a lover. No woman will want to approach you if you continue to be cold like this."
"I don't intend to have a lover. So I don't have to pretend to be gentle to ensnare them. Even without me being romantic a stupid woman feeds herself to me."
Yujin gaped in disbelief at Jinwoo's satire-laden answer. She knew who the stupid woman the man was referring to because she wasn't stupid enough to take the implied meaning of those words.
"Teach me to use knife."
"Like this?"
Slap
Yujin winced on the spot when a knife suddenly flew to her side. But this time the knife didn't hit her because Jinwoo didn't throw the knife at her. But she was quite surprised by the sudden appearance of the knife.
"The last time you stood there, I injured your precious face. Do you know, you have very sweet blood."
Yujin knew that was not a sentence of flirtation that was shown by a man to his lover. However Yujin felt her cheeks suddenly heat up when Jinwoo said that to her.
"Do you like the taste of blood? How strange!"
"Not really. I'll show you how to taste real blood."
"Aaaahh..."
Yujin shrieked in surprise as Jinwoo pulled her hand and kissed her lips lustfully. The man moved his lips so brutally that Yujin couldn't keep up with his insane kiss. In the midst of their lustful kiss, Yujin suddenly felt a salty taste in her mouth. The longer the saltiness got stronger until she felt like she had just swallowed salt. But she immediately realized that the salty taste she had just tasted was the taste of blood. The man without realizing it had hurt her lips.
So is this pain covered by pleasure?
"The taste of your blood is still the same, sweet."
Jinwoo wiped the corner of his lips which had a slight blood stain from Yujin's lip which he had bitten on. He then stretched out his hand and stroked the corner of Yujin's lips which was still bleeding a little because of the bite wound he gave. But the great thing is he managed to injure the woman without causing her pain. Instead Yujin was swept away in his tricky game.
"Watch your enemy Yujin, if you are not alert you will be defeated easily."
"I don't consider you as my enemy, so don't say as if I'm a stupid woman whom you managed to deceive with your passionate kiss. You would be lying if you said you were never close to women. The way you kiss me shows that you are a good kisser."
"Well... not looking close to women doesn't mean never tasting it, Yujin," replied Jinwoo casually with his smirk.
Yujin gaped in disbelief as she looked at the man earnestly for reassurance. Unfortunately Jinwoo seemed unwilling to continue their chat about women and instead gave her a medium sized knife that looked so sharp.
"Try to throw right at that target point."
"Huh, this is easy. I can do it," said Yujin arrogantly as she waved her right hand to throw the pointed object. And what happened was beyond Yujin's expectation because the knife was off.
"Ahh, it must be because your knife isn't sharp. I'll try it one more time."
Yujin took a knife that was bigger than the first knife. She started swinging her right hand and directed all her energy towards the sharp object she was holding. She couldn't look stupid in front of Lee Jinwoo. But, again she missed. The second knife actually shot far from the target point and ended up falling on the floor with a fairly loud clink. Yujin took the third knife again. She seemed too eager to look great in front of Jinwoo, so she was too hasty and put her technique aside.
"Stop it!"
Jinwoo grabbed the third knife from Yujin and threw it right at the target point. Yujin snorted in exasperation and looked at Jinwoo in annoyance.
"Okay, you win. You're great, and I'm stupid! "
"Arrogant!" Jinwoo replied sarcastically.
The man took a knife from the knife box in front of him, then held the sharp object in Yujin's hand. After that he began to teach Yujin how to hold the right knife and also how to make good angle so that the knife could fly far and stick precisely in the middle of the target point.
When Jinwoo leaned over the side of her face, Yujin felt her heart literally jump out of her chest cavity. She felt Jinwoo's face so close and the movement of the man beside her so intimate, even though they were only learning to throw knives. But still, Yujin felt that it wasn't just practicing because she didn't focus at all with the instructions given by Jinwoo.
Slap
Yujin winced in surprise when the knife suddenly shot far in front of her. Since earlier she was too busy admiring Jinwoo's face that she didn't realize that the knife had been thrown far from her hand and had penetrated perfectly into the target point.
"You didn't notice, did you?"
"Whoa, what? No, I noticed." Yujin stuttered.
Jinwoo chuckled in front of her and made Yujin suddenly freezed. This was the first time she saw Jinwoo laugh in front of her, although it was not a kind of loud laugh, she felt that it was an improvement for Lee Jinwoo.
"Are you laughing?" Yujin asked, stunned.
Jinwoo stopped his complacency and gave Yujin a strange look.
"I'm still a human."
Jinwoo's short answer made Yujin realize that Jinwoo was actually not that stiff. So far, he just hasn't found a funny object that makes him laugh.
So am I funny? I'm willing to look stupid in front of you if it can make you laugh General Lee ...
Yujin was stunned for a long time with her own thoughts. She wanted to make Jinwoo laugh in front of her and make him a normal man who was completely normal without the pain from the past. Unfortunately she was almost out of time. In a week she will marry Minwoo. And so far she has only been able to make small changes to Lee Jinwoo. What else should she do to him after this?
"Since when did you like playing knives?"
"Since I was at the training camp. My coach taught me because he knows I have other things that are not the same as my colleagues."
"When was the first time you killed someone?"
Yujin felt like a policeman interrogating her prisoners. But she was really curious about that man's past. Jinwoo was hiding too much so that she wanted to pry through the information one by one so she could understand Jinwoo further.
"When I was nineteen years old. Why? Are you afraid?"
Yujin shook her head. Yujin wasn't afraid at all. Instead, she felt proud because Jinwoo wanted to tell her the truth. It's really hard to find a guy who will actually be honest in front of a woman. Moreover, the man has a dark story in the past.
"Do you love your adoptive family?"
"Of course. I am very grateful that I was adopted by President Kang. If I didn't try to run away from the orphanage at that time and bump into President Kang and his wife who were walking around, maybe I would become a Lee Jinwoo who was even more terrible than this."
Jinwoo gave a gaze that was difficult to interpret. His eyes were blank on the dark wall, which was only lit by the dim light from the lights in the room.
"The orphanage where I used to live did not give us good treatment. They force the children to work to support the luxurious life of the owner. Being there feels like being in Hell. Plus I had bad experiences with my family. My father and mother were killed by my uncle because of my uncle's greed. But my father is too stupid. He exalted his family ties so much that he didn't realize that my uncle had always cheated him.
"The climax was when my father finally realized my uncle's betrayal. My father was going to report my uncle to the police for embezzling a lot of company money for personal pleasure. But before my father reported it, my father and mother had already been killed by my uncle. Then I was sent to that awful orphanage and just left without a penny, not even clothes." Jinwoo paused his story for a moment. Trying to think of the reason behind his attitude who suddenly told his past to the strange woman in front of him. He thought he was really crazy because he did this reckless act on Yujin.
"That day it all started. I, who was very young, had buried many wounds inside of me. I became paranoid about family ties and I never really entrusted anything to anyone else. If you ask President Kang about my past, he definitely won't be able to tell it for sure because he doesn't know what I really am himself. I always put a mask on in front of him and also in front of my mother. All they know is that I am full of achievement and resilience. But they don't know my dark side. You are the first to know everything. And you must listen to this carefully."
Yujin waited nervously for Jinwoo's next words. She did not think that the man finally chose to open up to her, after all this time she had done many ways to make him open.
"Thank you for loving me, but I can't reciprocate. You must marry Minwoo and live happily with him. Even though Minwoo is not a perfect guy, because he is actually just as pathetic as me. Since childhood Minwoo was under too much pressure from our father that he grew up to be an unhappy grown man. But I saw that he was very happy when he was with you, so make him happy. He's the only little brother I have. If he's happy, I'll be happy too."
Yujin unconsciously shed tears. This is the most emotional conversation she has ever had. How could a cold and sociopathic man like Jinwoo still think about other people's happiness. The man should be selfish and not think about the happiness of his family. In fact, Lee Jinwoo was not like that. He still has a very clean conscience in his deepest heart which has always been covered by his cruel demeanor which turns out to be a form of pain in the past.
Yujin was still sobbing to herself with her thoughts without being able to say a word to Jinwoo. Whereas Jinwoo only let Yujin cry, without intending to stop her.
"Why are you still thinking about other people's happiness? Don't you want to be happy?"
"For me to see my family happy, that's enough. I no longer need to think about happiness for myself. That—"
"Then what about my happiness? You didn't think about it?" interrupted Yujin quickly.
The woman still shed tears in front of Jinwoo without intending to prevent them from dripping. For some reason today he is too emotional. All the things that Jinwoo told her and her unrequited feelings triggered all the tears to spill out of her eye sockets. Come to think of it, that man was cruel. He made sure his own family was happy, but he didn't make sure Yujin's happiness.
"You will definitely be happy one day."
"How can I be happy if I marry someone I don't love. You keep thinking about your family's feelings but you don't think about my feelings. Marriage without love is tantamount to living in hell. You yourself know what it feels like to live in hell, but you actually pushed me to go to hell. Can't you just reciprocate my feelings?"
"No ican't. You're not part of my family, so I don't have to think about your happiness."
Jinwoo said sarcastically and immediately walked away leaving Yujin. Now that man has returned to being the cold and haughty Lee Jinwoo. All the tenderness that the man showed had evaporated from him and was replaced by the real Lee Jinwoo.
Yujin sobbed in the basement while pressing her chest which hurt. Her love story will really end tragically. She regrets that she has liked Lee Jinwoo since she was in middle school. If she could ask God, she wanted to love another man who would truly love her back instead of loving a cold and heartless man like Jinwoo. Her heart really hurt, and she felt unable to look into the future. It had been completely crushed into flakes of dust which was only waiting for the wind to blow it away.