The Venn Diagram | Part 1b
part 1a
He knows it's her the second she steps into the room. His body moves at its own accord, lifting himself from where he’s perched on a table to stand ramrod straight as his eyes take in the very image of her across the floor. She is dressed in the finest of clothes and is practically immaculate as she carries the skirt of her strapless dress just so that she can walk. Her eyes scan her surroundings as her steps take her closer and closer to him; her long dark hair flowing past one shoulder and down to her tapered waist while her porcelain skin gleams under the soft ballroom lights.
“Wow,” he breathes, slack-jawed as he continues to watch her because this is not what I expected. At all.
Everything else seems to fade into a blur of sounds in the background in that moment... and then when her gaze stops to look back at him, her eyes widening in surprise and something else that he can't (doesn't want to) decipher, his heart catches in his throat.
His feet begin to move without him knowing and all too soon, he is there somewhere in the middle of the dance floor, standing right in front of her.
“Hello,” she says softly.
“Hello.” He returns, and that is all it takes.
He doesn't need her to introduce herself because her name is already a soft whisper against his lips. She smiles, and it's only then that he shakes his head and realizes the mistake his heart is making, the mistake he doesn't want his heart to make.
~*~*~*~
The instant she sees him, BoA feels the rush of warmth tinged with something unidentifiable fill her senses. She is drawn to him in a way that she’s always only read in books-irrevocably tethered to another soul across a distance; aching to touch and drink the other’s presence in. BoA had heard tales of unexpected great loves from her friends in Paris. She had gushed and aww’d and ooh’d with the rest of them but she never truly believed it could happen to her.
Not with everything her father just told her. Not when her future was predetermined against her will.
Papa wants me to marry Jaejoong.
Isn’t it be just her luck that she’d find herself, for the first time, truly attracted to a man her father had hired as muscle to protect her?
The opening notes to a popular English ballad started then and as couples began to dance around them, BoA took it upon herself to clear the air (and steady her heart) by offering her hand up to the man in front of her. “Care to dance?” she asks, hoping her smile wasn’t too wide or her cheeks too pink. She didn’t want him to have any inkling of what she was feeling. Not ever, or not yet anyway.
The man blinked, momentarily confused, before shaking himself out of it and nodding. He took her hand and pulled her in so gently it made her body hum. He followed the steps well, which surprised her greatly-stepping back and forward and side to side at all the right cues, twirling at all the right moments. The music set a mood between them so palpable she was almost tempted to open her mouth and taste it on her tongue.
“So you are the man my father has assigned to take care of me?” She asks instead, looking up at him. He was so tall, almost a foot and half bigger that the top of her head barely reached up to his chin. She imagined she could easily slip and disappear against him. Her eyes softened as she looked at him, the girlish part of her fluttering with delight of his handsomeness. It was a plus, definitely a plus. “I’d met all of my father’s security detail before I left so there are a lot of new faces I don’t recognize. I suppose it’s safe to assume you are one of them?”
“Yes,” he says simply, looking down at her with a strange expression. The hand on the small of her back suddenly pushes her a few inches closer to him, narrowly avoiding a swaying couple, before he speaks again, “I got into the family two years after you went to Europe.”
“Ah, and your name is?”
“I should have started with that, huh?” He said, grinning in a shy and wry way that made her smile back. The music swells and he twirls her out, “My name is Jung Yunho.”
BoA can’t help herself and laughs as he brings her back to him, grinning wide all the while as one of her eyebrows quirked upwards. The smirk he gives her is genuine for a moment before he catches himself again and retreating. Closing off before she could fully appreciate the handsomeness of his smile.
She tries again for the smirk-just for the heck of it, “And what have you heard, Jung Yunho?”
“About what?” Yunho replies, swaying slower now as the music began to close. He felt her hold on to him until the very last note, standing close even as the couples began to disperse. Taking a full step back, he assumed a more professional posture (back straight and face forward) while he struggled to school his features into a neutral expression and keep his gaze on her face.
If BoA noticed any of his quiet struggles she didn’t let on and for that he was grateful. Instead, he led her away from the dance floor and towards a table. He pulled out a chair for her to sit-which she gratefully acknowledged, sitting primly with her hands on the skirt of her dress.
“About me? I hope you didn’t hear any bad stories.” She tells him, leaning forward just a smidge closer than what he would have liked and stage-whispering, “And if you heard any from my father, don’t believe him. He exaggerates.”
“Your father didn’t tell me much except to protect you.” Yunho says to her in a bored tone and she scoffs, “I was asked to be your guard, not your friend.”
“Well, it’d be awkward if you were.” BoA replies without thinking, and he pauses to look up at her in surprise as she clamps a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, I-that was-”
“It really would be awkward,” he says a beat later, waving her off. The perfect blush on her cheeks only intensifies as he continued to look at her, tempting him to place a palm upon her skin to feel its heat. But instead he pulled back and spoke lightly, remembering what Jaejoong had told her weeks ago: “I don’t know anything about except that you’re a good girl.”
The words works wonders seconds later when it sunk in and Yunho beats down the part of him that wonders why that is.
“Let me guess,” BoA starts, a soft smile lighting her lips, “Jaejoong?”
He nods, “So you do know him? I thought he was lying when he said he did. He joined the business a year before I did but that was still a year after you left.”
“We grew up together, he and I.” She tells him gently, “I’ve known him all my life. That’s kind of a nickname actually. His nickname for me. He’s always called me his good girl for as long as I can remember.”
The knowledge of this digs deep into his stomach but he wills it away, going for a short “Ah” as a response. They fall silent after that, looking back and taking each other in as they sat at opposite ends of the table. Yunho’s mind reeling at the sudden and complicated emotions warring inside of him at the very sight of her while BoA’s battled with the knowledge of what it is she feels for practically a stranger and the arrangement that was her only future.
It left them feeling breathless, having to go through so much internal calculations in hopes of tampering down the attraction them. It could never work, could never be, but damned it all they wanted to see if it could.
“I don’t need a guard.” BoA tells him a full-minute later, her eyes lighting up and holding his gaze. “Muscle, maybe, when I go out to shop and my best friend manages to convince me to buy 5 more pairs of shoes, but I’d rather have another friend while I’m here.”
The refusal closes up in his throat as she smiles shyly, blushing still and all Yunho could find himself able to do is shrug in response.
He would regret this later. He knows he will. He owes the Kwon family everything he has and treading this invisible line could only spell disaster for him.
Yunho knows but he toes the line anyway, pushing through.
“I can try.”
It’s funny though, how first meetings - however fairytale-perfect they may be - don’t always end with the same breathless captivation and tangible sparks with which they started, much to Soojung’s dismay. Five minutes later, she finds herself seated next to him at the bar, away from the dance floor, suddenly aware of the deafening silence between them. There is a palpable tension between the two as they swirl their drinks, neither of them facing each other. Glancing sideways, Soojung can now see Jongin somewhat clearly, taking in his strong jawline and tanned skin. The slow song from earlier is still booming through the speakers, and Soojung blushes, remembering the awkward episode from just moments before.
I...can’t dance, she had said - out loud, she wasn’t sure - somewhat embarrassed when a romantic melody filled the air and couples all around paired up for a slow dance. There had been a weird look in his eyes, she had noticed, as he merely stood there, hands in his pockets and feet tapping the tile, and then after a few standstill seconds, merely turned around and gestured her to follow him. Jongin is a man of few words, she realizes. Kind of like me, she thinks, and she doesn’t miss the ghost of a smile that appears on her lips as she gulps down her alcoholic drink. Tense situations call for strong drinks.
||+||+||+||
“Yes, mother, got it,” Jongin mutters into his phone. “I was going to take her back anyway so she doesn’t make a scene.” He grunts as he lifts a limp Soojung from her bar stool, carefully handling the folds of her dress as he steps away from the bar. “Why would you drink alcohol if you know you can’t handle it,” he groans to himself as he quickly guides her through a side door into the car waiting for them.
He never would have guessed that she would have such low alcohol tolerance, with her being a juvenile delinquent and all - the stereotype doesn’t quite fit at this point. One drink and some fifteen minutes later, she is already wasted, murmuring nonsense with tears streaming down her face. He finds it altogether baffling, and he makes a mental note to tell the maid assigned to her to use waterproof mascara (Jinri’s holy grail makeup advice).
After the brief car ride back to the mansion, and with some help from the staff, Jongin manages to get her to her room. She’s half delirious already when she plops down onto her bed. “Jongin?” she suddenly says, her voice small and delicate.
He freezes. “Hmm?”
She lies there for some few seconds longer, eyes blinking slowly and her limbs outstretched. “You’re so kind.” She’s so quiet, and Jongin finds himself kneeling by her bedside to listen. To be closer to her. Her hair’s fanned out behind her, and she turns on her side, curled up to face him. Jongin finds himself looking right into her gaze.
He’s not sure how to respond. “Thank you,” he manages quietly. The words sound strange coming out of his mouth. He can’t imagine what else this girl might want to say to him. They’ve only just met - but alcohol doesn’t care for those details.
“I don’t know many people who would take care of me like that.” She bites her lip for a moment. “I don’t know anyone, actually.” She murmurs, and she averts her gaze when Jongin notices her eyes watering and her expression struggle to maintain its former composure. “Sorry I’m such a mess.”
“It’s okay.” What else can he say?
“I’m really sorry if you hate me for intruding-”
“Intruding into what?” He gulps, feeling guilty for cutting her off quite brashly. He instinctively reaches out to clasp her limp hands in his, “It’s okay. It’s fine.” He doesn’t really know how to look at her at the moment. He feels a growing urge to hold her and tell her that somebody will love her, will look after her, she doesn’t need to feel this way - “Please don’t feel bad.”
She sniffles a bit, and Jongin sighs and reaches over to the tissue box perched on the bedside drawers. He daps at her eyes tentatively. “That’s sweet.” More sniffling.
Jongin refuses to admit to himself that she’s kind of cute. Oh my god she’s crying, that’s not cute, what is wrong with you Jongin -
“Sorry I’m a burden -”
“Look, it’s okay, you don’t need to apologise.”
She’s talking in murmurs, “- my father worked so hard to look after us and I was never very good to him, and now it’s too late - and it’s the same with my mother and I wasn’t very much use when she got sick - and Sooyeon, I don’t even know at this point - and I’m just so sorry that I’m not a good daughter -”
Jongin swallows again, and just moves the tissue box next to her head so they’re easily accessible. He feels terrible, just sitting here, twiddling his thumbs while this scrap of a girl cries her life story out to him. And she’s probably not fully aware that she’s doing it either.
“Uh - Soojung,” he really hopes that is her name, it’d be a disaster if he’d gotten that wrong, “you don’t need to feel bad for that, it’s alright, everything’s alright -”
“Nothing’s alright.” She stops talking after that, just sniffling and weakly rubbing her eyes with her hands. She shudders in her breathing in too, and Jongin sighs, wondering how this girl turned out to be a juvenile delinquent, breaking and entering and vandalising. “I’ve lost everyone, I’m going to be alone -”
“You’re not going to be alone.” He says that with more conviction than he ever dreamed was possible. He feels an inexplicable urge to hold her close, and he wonders if they’ll become good friends - will she stay with them long-term - what are you thinking, you idiot? This is temporary, don’t promise what you can’t deliver -
“Thank you,” her voice dies off at the end, fading into the silence of the bedroom.
Jongin just sits there, legs going numb and feeling an urge to pull the covers up over Soojung, because it’s not gentlemanly to just let a girl go cold at night. Get over yourself Jongin, she’s not going to get hypothermia and die or anything, don’t be so worried -
He pulls the sheets over her, making sure he doesn’t disturb her.
He walks out.
Don’t get too attached.
END OF PART 1