AAE -- For Better For Worse

Part 2 -- Chapter 17

by LoveCR2

edited by All-About-AAE

 

 

The return drive to Seoul was as different in atmosphere from their outward journey as the sunny blue sky was from dark massing of clouds overtaking the speeding BMW. Hyung-Chul, in a foul mood nursing his hurt from Sun-Mi's supposed betrayal, maintained a frigid silence. Sun-Mi, in an equally foul mood nursing the scrapes and bruises from her barefoot clamber up the cemetery field, boiled under an icy surface.

 

Soon strong winds were battering the car as a torrential downpour flooded the single-lane, winding roadway tracing the lake's sinuous shoreline. The wind-driven sheets of rain reduced visibility to less than a dozen meters, but Hyung-Chul, hunched over the steering wheel, raced on heedless of the dangerous conditions.

 

"Senior! Be careful!" Sun-Mi anxiously complains after another white-knuckled blind curve. "You're scaring me!"

 

Instead, ignoring her, he accelerates the car, skidding the rear wheels across the wet pavement.

 

"Please slow down!" she demands again, "What if we crash?"

 

"Right now, I don't care if I live or die," he snarls back.

 

"But I do!" she shrieks. "Stop the car!"

 

 

At her strident order, Hyung-Chul relents, jamming the brakes and wrenching the BMW off the road onto a graveled shoulder. By now, the worst of the storm has passed over and the heavy rain subsided, but sprinkles from the low, scudding cloud bank threaten a recurrence.

 

"Thank God," Sun-Mi exhales a deep breath of relief. "What's got into you, Senior?"

 

"You demanded that I expose everything to you. Yet you still held back your own secrets from me!" he accuses her irately.

 

"Whatever are you talking about?" she retorts defensively.

 

"You really don't know? 'I dreamed of what our life could have been if Young-Mi hadn't stolen you away' -- did you say that or not?!" he repeats her private words to Woo-Jin.

 

Sun-Mi is shocked. "You eavesdropped on me!?"

 

"And it's a good thing, or I'd never know how two-faced you truly are!" he bellows. "I've had enough of your dithering!"

 

"And I've had enough of your hypocrisy!" she spits venomously. "Good by, Director Yoon!"

 

 

Sun-Mi throws the car door open and gets out, staggering as a blustery gust pummels her. Determined to distance herself from Hyung-Chul with his unreasonable attitude, she stalks off down the paved road.

 

Headlights suddenly appear from around the sharp bend ahead, rapidly bearing down on her. Sun-Mi freezes in terror, but the car zips past, missing her by centimeters. Shocked by the near-fatal collision, Sun-Mi catches her breath, then doggedly starts off again, now walking on the shoulder for safety, illuminated in the headlights of Hyung-Chul's car. She totters along unsteadily, her heels wobbling in the loose gravel.

 

But after taking only a dozen steps, a hand roughly grabs her arm, stopping Sun-Mi dead in her tracks. Before she can protest and wrench herself free, a tall, wide body moves to shelter her.

 

 

Hyung-Chul pushes Sun-Mi's wind-blown mop of hair from her face and looks deeply into her eyes with an intensity she has never seen.

 

"What are you doing?" he demands, his voice wracked with anguish. "Now that we're finally together, you have some death wish?"

 

"Better I die from my own doing, than yours," she tosses the accusation back at him irately.

 

 

Feeling Sun-Mi's body still trembling from shock, Hyung-Chul holds her tightly, gratefully.

 

"I'm sorry that I frightened you. I was out of my mind," he apologizes. "But how could you put yourself in such danger?"

 

"I ... I didn't know what to do," she murmurs, burying her face in his chest, grateful to be in his arms again. "I didn't want to argue ... I wasn't thinking ..."

 

"I wasn't thinking either," he regrets. "Telling you to go ... I didn't mean that. I can't live without you."

 

"And I can't live without you," she echoes his words. "I was such a fool, going back and forth in my mind for so long, when my heart always knew from the beginning."

 

"No, I was the fool, not you," Hyung-Chul solemnly disagrees. "First for being jealous. Then for letting you get out of the car. But now ... it's time to end the foolishness!"

 

 

Cupping her chin with his fingers, he raises her face so she can see he is serious.

 

Thinking he wants to kiss her, Sun-Mi closes her eyes and puckers her lips, waiting ...

 

 

But instead Hyung-Chul says, "It doesn't matter what our fathers say, or what anyone else thinks..."

 

As he is speaking, he reaches into his pocket, takes out the engagement ring, and slips it onto her finger.

 

"I love you, Jin Sun-Mi, and whatever happens, I will marry you, and cherish you, through all my life," he vows.

 

 

The surprise sends tears of joy rolling down her cheeks as Sun-Mi gazes at the ring, now back in it's rightful place.

 

"I love you, too, Yoon Hyung-Chul, and whatever happens, I will marry you, and cherish you, for all my life," she reiterates his words and their promise.

 

 

They come together eagerly, energized to confirm the endurance of their love after the bruising jabs of their stormy tiff. The buffeting winds enveloping them serve only to fuel their resurgent passion, igniting an amorous fuse that races, sizzling and sparking white-hot, every synapse straining, sending them precariously close to the ultimate pinnacle of love.

 

Bright headlights momentarily flash on the embracing couple, engrossed in their ardent exchange. Then the passing truck flings a wave of muddy water flying. Startled by the unexpected, inundating tsunami, they separate, sputtering and gasping, soaked from head to toe.

 

 

Looking at Hyung-Chul's grime-streaked face, Sun-Mi bursts out laughing.

 

"What's so funny?" he grumbles, finding no humor either in the literal quenching of their fervor, or in their successive sodden state.

 

"It's déjà vu," she points out giddily, still intoxicated by their ecstatic encounter. "Like the first time you proposed, we got drenched again!"