DM Chapter 38
It didn’t matter what she’d been through. All that mattered was that the decisions she had made had led her to him.
If a mirror that looked exactly like her were to smile, this might be the feeling.
A sudden thought sent a shiver down Sarin’s body. Owen slowly lowered the hand that had been caressing Sarin’s cheek, pressing his thumb deeply along the line of her throat as if someone familiar with the existence of calloused flesh at the tip of his fingernail.
“There are places you can only know by stepping in.”
Sarin’s voice trembled as she answered.
Crunch.
He grabbed the end of Sarin’s chair with his remaining hand and pulled her closer. The faint sound of dragging on the floor made her slender shoulders twitch in surprise.
“So, how does it feel now that you’ve stepped in?”
Owen’s face, now incredibly close, still didn’t hide the amusement as he asked.
…Damn it. Even if she takes a step back, it’s already a mess, so she can’t do anything about it.
“I don’t know.”
Thoughts different from what she intended slipped out. The hand caressing her throat didn’t stop. Her mouth felt dry as the pulse under Owen’s hand seemed to reveal the lie she told.
“Well, I guess you need to know more.”
He noticed.
Two seemingly different individuals. The fact that Sarin saw herself in him.
“Owen.”
Sarin, startled by Kirill’s voice coming from the kitchen, pushed him away. Kirill, standing with two shotguns, spoke with an expressionless face.
“Get up. Let’s go hunting or something.”
The forest was nothing but darkness, with no visible path ahead. Unsuitable for hunting, but Owen, who never let an opportunity slip by, stood up and received one of the guns from Kirill.
“Kirill, you can’t use hunting as an excuse to kill people.”
Gayeon, with her arms crossed and a stern look on her face, warned from behind. An amused glint passed over Owen’s face.
They had learned hunting from Nikolai. Despite not interacting much, they shared similar hunting methods.
“I just wanted to have a little chat.”
Kirill said softly, smiling brightly at Gayeon. Owen sat back with a subtle smile, staring at Sarin, who blinked her eyes widely. Then, he lightly unwrapped the bandage she had given him and clenched and unclenched his hand.
“It could be troublesome if you get dull and make a mistake by accident.”
Would it really be troublesome? Sarin looked at the fallen bandage.
“Just wait quietly.”
He licked his lips unintentionally. His eyes were those of a hunter who found it regrettable to leave the prey he had just tasted.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
The final words were a warning to Gayeon. Upon hearing the words, Gayeon let out a bitter laugh.
Gayeon knew that no matter what she did, Sarin would never leave him first. However, the discomfort toward Gayeon was growing, knowing that they shared the same language.
As if feeling the chilly atmosphere, Kirill once again stood between Gayeon and Owen, staring at each other with an expressionless face.
As they blocked each other’s view, the foreshadowing of the night hunt came suddenly.
After Kirill and Owen left, they brewed warm tea and sat in front of the living room fireplace. Sarin, who felt relieved to see her fur still rolled up, took a sip of tea to calm her surprised mind.
“It really can’t be helped.”
When Gayeon spoke again in friendly Korean, Sarin swallowed the tea in her mouth. Sitting on the soft sofa and looking out the dark window, her face revealed a sense of bitterness.
“I thought that no matter where we went, they would follow us like a shadow, so I thought it would be better to poke a hole and hide right in front of them. There’s a saying that it’s darkest under the lamp, isn’t there?”
President Belov didn’t easily give up on his somewhat usable son. It seemed to calm down after three years, but now Kirill’s grandfather, Nikolai, was looking for him. That’s what she heard from Kirill, but she still couldn’t understand them, which made her laugh.
“Isn’t life on the run difficult?”
Gayeon shrugged at Sarin’s straightforward question.
“Maybe because I have money. It’s not that hard. It’s just a bit disappointing that we can’t stay in good places for long. The fact that I can’t settle down makes it gradually more disappointing.”
Kirill was like a child, excessively honest with emotions and fearless. Gayeon had to explain to him many times how people live and the natural way of blending in. But every once in a while, his nature would explode.
It usually happens when Gayeon is hurt or there is a threat to her safety.
During those times, even Gayeon couldn’t stop Kirill.
“Ah….”
“How did you end up with a guy like that?”
Gayeon turned her gaze towards Sarin and asked. Then she suddenly chuckled, thinking about how she also ended up meeting Kirill. Without words, they understood each other’s situations through their gazes.
“Well… I didn’t have much of a choice.”
She regretted coming here, and meeting Owen was considered the worst choice of her life. Yet, even if she could go back before meeting him again, Sarin believed she would still board the plane heading to Eden City.
In Korea, she felt suffocated. However, she didn’t want to give up the child because of the debts she couldn’t handle.
“You’re right, I didn’t really have a choice either; I just followed Kirill. At first, I couldn’t believe there was someone like him. Just thinking about it at that time…”
Sighing in agreement with Sarin’s words, Gaeyeon takes a sip of her tea and shakes her head, sighing.
Although she doesn’t know the details of their first meeting, the moment when she first met Owen suddenly came to her mind, and she found herself nodding unconsciously. She couldn’t forget the eyes she saw in the mirror and the moment she saw his shining irises after cutting her hair.
“Ms. Sarin.”
“Yes?”
“Kirill is the exact opposite of me, but being by his side, there were moments when I thought, ‘This person is something else.'”
Sarin quietly listened to her words.
Gayeon was a stranger. However, she couldn’t turn away from the affectionate stories she told, as if she were a senior in life. No one had told Sarin such stories before.
Especially stories about Owen, she couldn’t share them with anyone. But now that someone appeared who seemed to understand her, it felt like she couldn’t help but pour out her feelings to that person.
“Sarin, it doesn’t seem like you’re at that point yet.”
Her face was tired and worn, pushed to its limits to the point where it could crumble at any moment.
“I’m….”
“It’s better to quit before you feel like that.”
Gayeon said, leaving the rest unsaid. She understood without the need for further explanation.
An unbearable person. There were times when even Gayeon felt overwhelmed by Kirill. What surrounded them was far from ordinary. Whenever she saw the dark reality, she felt the desire to turn away and run. Gayeon advised Sarin to escape from here if her commitment wasn’t deep.
“I can’t just back down anyway.”
She met the father of the child she had longed for. It was a traumatic encounter that made her wish Owen was Hayan’s biological father. Now there was no turning back.
Sarin was the only protector of Hayan, and to protect the child from the cunning Pavel, who deceived her like Owen, she had to take Owen’s hand.
“The men in this household have an exceptional talent for winding people up.”
Already, Sarin had taken Owen’s hand, saying with her own mouth that she would sleep with him.
Now they had crossed the river of no return. In her weak state of mind, if she hadn’t held onto Owen’s hand, she would have found a place to run again. It could have been alcohol, or it might have been a choice to follow her sister’s path, crumbling.
So, knowing that this wasn’t a good choice, Sarin desperately held onto Owen.
“That won’t happen.”
As Sarin asserted, Gayeon looked at her with a peculiar expression.
He sees her as nothing more than amusement. It was different from Kirill’s affectionate gaze at Gayeon. His interest in her might be a meaningless distraction that could shift elsewhere at any moment.
“I hope so.”
Gayeon said to Sarin, her voice soft. Seated on the sofa in the warm reception room, covered with a blanket from somewhere, Gayeon quickly started a different conversation. Even Sarin, who rarely engaged in conversations with others, was soon drawn into the story.
Listening to Gayeon’s tales of traveling around the world for three years, Sarin lost track of time as the night grew deeper. While in the midst of the conversation, Gayeon fell asleep first, so Sarin covered her with the blanket. It was undoubtedly a long day for Gayeon, who had come all this way.
Sarin stood up and looked out the window.
It was pitch black.
It felt like any moment golden eyes would twinkle in that darkness, she couldn’t take her eyes away.
She listened intently, wondering if the sound of gunfire might echo again, like in the morning. As the quiet night fell, an inexplicable sense of suffocation enveloped her. She caressed her neck, unable to leave her place.
The dense fog that clung to the forest showed no signs of dissipating, even by the afternoon. After a simple breakfast with Gayeon, they spent the afternoon discussing unfinished matters from the day before.
The outside world became noisy in the late afternoon.
“They’re back.”
However, before Owen’s voice could be heard, unfamiliar voices reached Sarin’s ears. Gayeon, who had been gazing out the window with a carefree expression, gestured to her, calling her attention.
“Looks like they caught a wolf.”
Several people were moving a dead wolf to an unknown place, possibly a stable or warehouse on one side of the mansion. Through the window, they saw Kirill walking toward them. Owen was not in sight, and for a moment, her heart sank.
